1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an evaluation apparatus and method that evaluates the environmental load of a circulated life cycle in which a group of products recovered from one of a plurality of markets is introduced into another market, cost thereof and profit thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
People are deepening their understanding of how critical environment problems are; they now consider that one of the most important objects is to construct a circulated system at every level including national government, local government, and corporations. With a circulated system, it is effective to reuse the functions of products and components rather than recycling materials. Thus, in recent years, makers have recovered and disassembled used products and reused the resulting components for new products; this process is typical of single-use lenses. This reuse is now desired to be applied to other industrial products.
To establish the reuse as a business, it is necessary to quantitatively pre-evaluate how the reuse changes business profits and an environmental load. The point in evaluating the reuse business is to accurately estimate the balance between reuse products and demand for them and the supply and demand balance between the number of reused components supplied and the number of components required which is derived from the production of products into which the components are integrated. That is, if the number of reuse products or components is small compared to the number of reuse products or components required, the number of products or components newly produced must be increased. In contrast, if the number of reuse products or components is excessive, the surplus products or components must be kept in stock or must be recycled or disposed of. Thus, a technique has been disclosed which simulates the relationship between the supply and demand for reuse products or components within a product family as well as the effects of the relationship on the business (see, for example, Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2002-117106).
As a conventional technique for evaluating the impacts of reuse, a method has been disclosed which identifies products to be reused before calculating impacts on the environment and business profits (see, for example, “Analysis of Costs/Utilities of Material Circulated on Life Cycle Simulation”, Murayama et al., Hiroshima University, Journal of The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 67, No. 660 (2002-8)). However, this method does not enable unique calculations if for example, there are a plurality of candidates for products into which reused components are to be integrated.
Thus, the conventional techniques evaluate the environmental load, cost and profit of a circulated product life cycle that targets one market in reusing products or components or recycling materials. Disadvantageously, the conventional techniques cannot evaluate a circulated product life cycle that targets a plurality of markets.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an evaluation apparatus and a method that can easily and efficiently evaluate environmental load of a circulated life cycle that targets a plurality of markets, cost thereof and profit thereof.